© 1997 Lawrence University Press
Milwaukee-Downer as a Liberal Arts Institution: Its Curriculum
There was a significant difference between the educational goals of the small liberal arts colleges in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries and the goals of the dominant institutions of higher education, the universities, during this period.
By contrast to the college ideal of "well-roundedness" and to the college's devotion to producing the "Whole Man" of fine character, the burgeoning university sought to adapt itself to the processes of rapid industrialization and urbanization taking place in the general society and thus emphasized vocational and professional training to produce individuals capable of achieving material success.
The essence of the difference between the college and university lay in their respective curricular preferences. The college, on the one hand, favored the use of a fixed curriculum in which courses in classics and mathematics and in subjects like Mental Physiology, Natural Theology, Political Economy, Constitutional Law, and Moral Philosophy trained the mind to think. The university, on the other hand, favored flexibility in the curriculum, increasingly instituting it by way of an "elective" system that included not only the classics and mathematics but potentially any and every subject of interest to the mind. The effect of the university approach was a departure from the college's goal of broadly training the mind for unspecified future applications to a narrower training, selected by the student according to personal tastes, aimed at the acquisition of specific practical skills. A "utilitarianism" came to characterize the American university, wherein the university stepped away from learning and culture as it existed in the college, to produce practical men who were both acquainted with the problems of "real life" and equipped to grapple with them.
Because university education abandoned broad culture in favor of encouraging the acquisition of specific knowledge and skills to earn a living, and because this was perceived as blatant materialism, it engendered the scorn of the colleges. Nowhere was this attitude more apparent than in the rhetoric of Milwaukee-Downer President Ellen Sabin, whose remarks frequently distinguished between education that was "useful" and education that was merely "utilitarian." The former term referred to those applications of formal knowledge that enriched daily life, as when principles of chemistry, for example, were employed to improve the understanding and practice of cookery. The latter term, by contrast, referred to schooling that was promoted simply on the basis that it "pays," that it was directed solely toward earning a livelihood. In 1904 she complained to a Fox Lake, Wisconsin, audience that
. . . unless any subject can justify itself as directly improving one's chances in earning a livelihood, it is denounced as a "fad" and dropped. . . . The argument that a certain method or study enriches life, increases the power to enjoy or appreciate reaches but a few. The successful argument is not will this make better, nobler human beings, but will this make one's chances better in the struggle for existence.
She felt that development of moral human beings would not result from education that only stressed utility. The object of education, Sabin insisted, should be to proceed beyond vocational training and achieve complete self-realization. If this objective prevailed, she was certain that man would still make a living but that would be "a means of life, not its end."
Not only did this viewpoint match that of the small New England liberal arts colleges, it also matched that of other small colleges in Milwaukee-Downer's home state of Wisconsin, as was clearly evidenced by Milwaukee-Downer's membership in a group known as Wisconsin Colleges Associated. This was an organization of private Christian colleges in Wisconsin, all of which, with the single exception of Milwaukee-Downer, were either men's or coeducational institutions. Along with Milwaukee-Downer, the members included Beloit, Northland, Ripon, Milton, Campion, Carroll, and Lawrence Colleges and Marquette University. As was true of their New England counterparts, these colleges explicitly distinguished themselves from schools having purely vocational motivation:
. . . it may be said that the colleges of our group represent almost entirely that type of education which is known as a purely college type. . . which stands for broad culture and sound training, for citizenship and service, without. . . speedy emolument.
As was true of their New England counterparts, these colleges made the tacit assumption that it was the classical curriculum that facilitated their ability both to train the mind to think (to achieve "mental discipline") and to develop Christian character and devotion to public service. Thus, the presidents of the member institutions looked askance at what they considered the tendency of education to depart from the classical curriculum, thereby decreasing the possibilities for training appropriate individuals to become scholars, writers, and college professors. They proposed setting themselves the task of seeking out promising students and urging them to "prepare themselves for the greatest usefulness and the broadest service, rather than for purely utilitarian pursuits, stimulated by the desire merely to gain a livelihood." Here, as in Sabin's own rhetoric, the concept of "usefulness" was defined in terms of broad service to society, while "utilitarianism" was linked to the narrower pursuit of making a living. Education, it was felt, could only be truly "useful" if it facilitated societal improvement through the application of Christian principles to social, economic, and industrial life.
Does Introduction of Electives into the Curriculum Signal Change in Milwaukee-Downer's Mission?